


not like the old days

by quixoti



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, Smoking (of course), UST, mentions of abuse, post The Gang Hits the Road, road trip fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5525618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixoti/pseuds/quixoti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s a tragicomedy, this fate of theirs, and like a beggar who steals bread Mac gorges himself on it, fills himself up, allows himself for this one day, in this hotel room halfway across the country from where he belongs, to be happy with no strings attached.</p>
            </blockquote>





	not like the old days

“What if we just, like, went on our own, bro,” Dennis is saying, face too close in the hazy light. “The Range Rover is out of the shop, and I’m still hot about the whole road trip thing, can’t really move past it,” and Mac is nodding, a slow smile creeping over his face. They’re way too high for this, stayed up all night smoking and laughing and drinking, too, god, he’s going to have a hangover, and the movie has been looping the title sequence for hours. 

(They’re both in their thirties. This, the staying up all night, the excessive inebriation, is no longer a subversion of authority. It is a celebration. There are certain things about Dennis that Mac understands. Mac, like a satellite, has been dutifully following and watching and learning about Dennis for years and years, knows that he’s a little broken, that something will seize up inside his skull and make him scream and thrash and forgo eating and sleeping for days and days. They’ve just come out of a two month period of this; Mac has the scars to prove it, bruises in the shape of long graceful fingers and delicate knuckles. So when Dennis’s edges finally smooth back out, when he looks at Mac with something like tenderness rather than cold hatred, Mac is inclined to play along, to clink beer bottles and smoke weed and touch in the dark. It’s a ritual now, like Christmas or birthdays or football games: we are still here, we are still living, there are demons inside our heads but they haven’t won yet. Mac would follow Dennis to the end of the earth, if it would make him happy.)

Mac doesn’t say any of that, though, doesn’t express how fucking glad he is that all the monsters are back in their cages, just takes a level sip of his beer. “Only if we can stop and see the world’s biggest ball of twine,” Mac says instead. When Dennis fixes him with a flat, incredulous stare, Mac continues. “It’s really non-negotiable at this point. I thought about it, I got hot, I gotta see it. Who knows how many years we have left, dude? Do you want to die without having seen the biggest ball of twine?”

“You’re a fucking dumbass,” Dennis says, but he’s smiling. “Pack your shit, we need to do this as fast as possible before Dee tries to nose in.”

Mac is yanking sleeveless shirts off their hangers and tossing them in his suitcase before Dennis finishes the thought.

\--

“You really don’t think we should spring for better maps, Den? This wants to route us over a bridge that I’m pretty sure fell before the Civil War,” Mac whines, Dennis’s reading glasses perched low on his nose. (Mac can’t afford his own, they don’t have optical insurance. He thinks their prescriptions would probably be the same anyway.) 

Dennis waves a dismissive hand in Mac’s direction, exhaling cigarette smoke all over the car. “Old school is the only possible way to go about this, Mac, road trips are a classic experience for young American men like ourselves. No need to fix what ain’t broken.”

“Except this bridge,” Mac huffs, tossing the jumble of yellowing maps in the backseat carelessly. “All I know is that we get on the I-76 and take it to I-70, but I’ve got absolutely no clue how.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Dennis promises in a rare flash of optimism, taking one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it out the window. Mac seriously doubts that, they’ve never once succeeded at doing anything like this before, not in fifteen years (they’ll be lucky if they even make it out of South Philly), but Dennis looks radiant, confident and in control, and Mac is content to let him do whatever. It’s nice to get a break from the bar and some fresh air, he thinks, popping the cap off a beer and swigging a generous amount. It’s nice to get to be alone with Dennis when he’s like this. Good days come around less and less, the older they get.

“There’s one thing I’m a little confused on,” Mac starts. “The smoking. I thought you quit, and how’d you have time to pick up so many packs anyway, bro? We just decided to do this like, three hours ago, and I’ve been with you the entire time.”

Dennis scowls. “The classic old school road trip, dude! I don’t understand how you’re not getting this,” and it’s comfortable, it’s familiar, and so Mac just laughs and says, “Whatever, man. Give me a puff.”

Dennis gives him this little sideways once-over, like he’s sizing him up, and switches the cigarette into his right hand. Eyes resolutely on the road, he lifts the cigarette to Mac’s lips with his own narrow, nimble fingers. (If Mac trembles, if Mac flushes, it’s just because he’s surprised.)

The nicotine pools in his throat like sticky acid and Mac chokes on it, coughing and sputtering, and Dennis laughs but not in a cruel way, and when the tears clear out of his eyes the cigarette is hanging off Dennis’s lips again. Mac thinks, that was just in my mouth, Mac thinks, he’s gonna get lung cancer, Mac thinks nothing at all.

A thick silence fills the car, but it’s not uncomfortable. Dennis pops in a CD. When Rick Astley’s crooning reaches his ears, Mac snickers, and Dennis socks him lightly in the shoulder. “Oh, look,” says Dennis, and there’s the big green sign telling them they’re coming up on their exit, and when Mac thinks Dennis is too busy watching traffic, he maybe sings along to the CD a little.

The green SUV rolls onto the interstate and into the rising sun. It blinds Mac; when he can’t bear to squint out the windshield any longer, all he can look at is Dennis, incandescent and thrown into sharp, shiny relief. Mac swallows, throat catching. (Sounds about right.)

\--

They’ve been driving almost two hours when Dennis suddenly eases off an exit. Mac had been dozing, arm limp out the window, and jolts awake when he registers that they’re slowing. “Whmm?” Mac yawns, dragging a hand down his face.

“You ever been to the Hershey’s factory, bro?”

“N-no.”

Dennis gleams, grin splitting his face nearly in half. “Well, now you are, bitch!”

They take the free tour of the factory, shaking with laughter as they loudly dish out crude toilet humor, nearly getting thrown out when Dennis sticks his finger in some chocolate on the conveyor belt. “This is gonna set me way back on my calorie content for today, but, god damn,” he says, licking it off his finger in one lewd motion, freezing Mac in place. (Mac is overjoyed when the security officer asshole comes over to yell at them.)

They get through the rest of the tour without further altercation (although the security interference sets Dennis’s jaw cruel and stubborn, which puts Mac on edge) but when they emerge back into fresh air he unspools, placing a steady but gentle hand on Mac’s shoulder, steering him toward another building. “We’re gonna design the best fucking chocolate bar this world has ever seen and eat it for breakfast,” Dennis says cheerily, and so they do. Dennis coughs up the money for the tickets, complaining the whole damn time. “Jesus shit, dude, these jackholes front a lot of money for the privilege of dumping ingredients together. Maybe we should incorporate that into the bar somehow, huh? Build your own shots?”

They put in peanut butter, marshmallow, almonds, caramel, and (after much heated debate) nougat. They call it The Irish Pub. They snap the bar in half once they get to the car, making snagging the biggest piece like it’s a wishbone, biting in like kids on Christmas. It is, Mac rhapsodizes, the absolute greatest candy he’s ever tasted. Dennis is less impressed but doesn’t say so, nibbles his thoughtfully, letting it melt all over his hand as it heats up outside.

“Fuck,” he swears, voice lilting with irritation. “I can’t get this shit all over my upholstery,” and he--goddamn him--sucks his fingers back into his mouth like he’s putting on a show, again, cherry red mouth popping around his own pale skin, and Mac feels like he’s on fire, whole body raw and exposed like live wires. If Dennis knows what he’s doing, he doesn’t acknowledge it. If something stirs in his pants, well, Mac’s gotten boners from really good food before. (Oh, how he lies to himself.)

\--

Their bodies hold up til West Virginia and then Dennis pulls over on the interstate shoulder, rests his head on the steering wheel and groans, exaggeratedly melancholy. “I’ve never been so tired in my entire fucking life,” he whines, and Mac scoffs.

“You need to carboload,” Mac says sagely, mid yawn. “Let’s find a restaurant, and not one of those dykey vegan-vegetarian places you like so much.”

Dennis shoots him a reproachful look, stretching, his shirt tail riding up past his happy trail and jutting hipbones. “We had all that chocolate today, though,” he says, voice inscrutable. His eyes are bleary and unfocused and this is perilous, one foot in the grave and the other dangling in a purgatory of monsters, one word wrong and this all goes to hell. Mac swallows, calculates, prays. 

“You haven’t had a drink for hours, dude, at least let’s go somewhere and get a beer in you,” and Dennis wrinkles his nose but eventually nods reluctantly. The world stops spinning into the sun, turns right on her axis, and Mac lets out a shaky breath he didn’t know he was holding. They can keep going.

They end up somewhere called Later Alligator, garishly touristy, bright pinks and purples. Mac catches Dennis squinting as they enter and he wants to rib him, call him a frail little bitch, bro you can’t even look peeling paint in the eye, but the anxiety of earlier smothers him, holds him down. Sometimes, life with Dennis feels like a balancing act, a tightrope stretched taut across the line between living and dying. Sometimes, Mac doesn’t know which way he’s falling.

Tension like a vise, Mac and Dennis don’t speak until they’ve chosen a rickety table next to a window. People amble aimlessly by, window shopping, laughing with children, and Mac and Dennis avoid each other’s eyes over spiked coffee and sandwiches. Finally, Dennis says, casually, “this is the farthest we’ve ever gotten on a plan like this,” and Mac’s laugh comes out wrong and sharp in the afternoon glow, but it’s something, It’s something. “Also, this coffee is fucking delicious,” and Mac immediately dissents, pinching his nose and asserting that straight shots or beer are the only alcohol really worth ingesting, and the resulting argument is too loud, too fulsome, turning heads and inciting complaints. 

Routine. 

When the waitress, a cute little brunette number with a hell of an ass (Dennis hasn’t even tried to hit on her save a few obligatory remarks, which blindsides Mac but he sure isn’t complaining), brings the check, Dennis stretches out sinuous and vainglorious, fixing her with a smile that could bring down the whole sky. “So I see that the total comes to thirty dollars and sixty four cents...yeah, I’m not gonna pay that. How about twenty dollars. Meet me in the middle?”

The waitress, nonplussed, clears her throat and keeps her voice saccharinely sweet. “I’m sorry, sir, was there something the matter with your order? We’d be more than happy to compensate you for any errors.”

Dennis shakes his head. “Oh, it was pretty good. I mean, I’ve had better, but it wasn’t send-it-back kind of mediocre. No, I just think that thirty dollars for sandwiches and coffee is a bit exorbitant. I’ll even go up to twenty five, just ‘cause I’m a generous guy. But you can see how thirty is just over the top, can’t you?”

Obviously flustered now, the waitress smoothes down her hair and manages to stay polite. She was a real professional; Mac was impressed. Sweet Dee could learn a few things from this broad. “Well, sir, you did have two coffees with Bailey’s. Both of you did, actually,” she ventures, and Dennis is enjoying himself now, sliding his hands behind his head, the paragon of nonchalance. 

“Is that some judgement I hear in your voice, ma’am? Let my partner and I get as tipsy in a sandwich joint as we like, please, you’re here to serve, not berate. Although you weren’t particularly good at that, I must say,” and Mac feels all funny in the stomach at that, at partner, but he gets distracted by the trainwreck of this poor waitress in Bumfuck, West Virginia, muddled and frantically failing at being civil.

“Sir, you know this is a restaurant, right? Where you pay the full price for menu items you order, like every other restaurant in the United States?”

Dennis’s smile is so crooked and self-indulgent. “Twenty seven, final offer. And believe me, I’m willing to stay here all day until I get what I want.”

“He ain’t jokin, I’ve seen him do it,” Mac contributes, and Dennis rewards him with a pleased nod.

The waitress contorts her face into the semblance of a smile. “Let me go talk to my manager and see what I can get worked out for you two gentlemen,” and as soon as she steps away, Dennis chuckles and turns rapt blue eyes on Mac. 

“This is even better than those gypsy bastards! Do you see how perturbed we made her? I love this road trip,” he stage-whispers, and Mac nods loyally and then the waitress is reappearing, face plastered into something near to politeness.

“Good news, sir. My manager has decided to give you a five-dollar discount. Will that be all?”

“Absolutely,” Dennis says with vigor. “Thank you for the barter, ma’am.”

The woman moves stiffly away from their table, not even bothering with the masquerade of dutiful servant, and he and Dennis drift toward the parking lot, to the Range Rover, ready to drive on and on across the universe. When Mac tries to open his mouth to ask about partner, his stomach doing cartwheels as they ease into highway speed, all his words are snatched away by the wind. They don’t leave a tip.

\--

Indianapolis announces itself with skyscrapers and crushing exhaustion. They switched drivers around two hours ago, Dennis threatening Mac within an inch of his life if the Range Rover came out of this with as much as the suggestion of a scratch, and has since been idly fucking around with the radio, singing earsplitting karaoke and 80s hair metal, cajoling Mac to join in (of course he knows the words, he’s been with Dennis years and years, you don’t get out of that unscathed.) Since Dennis asks him to, since Dennis looks so unfettered and calm, he does. They do a particularly impressive duet to “Here I Go Again”. Dennis has a beautiful voice, he really does, not that Mac would ever say it to his face. After “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, Dennis loses interest, begins spinning entire life stories for the drivers around them.

“See him?” Dennis gestures with the neck of his beer bottle to a balding, professional looking man in a pristine Lexus. “He’s a director at a Fortune 500 company, but he didn’t buy the car using that money. No, he runs a male escort service on the side, I’m sure of it.” and, of a harried looking woman with a gaggle of kids, “Poor woman is saving those little assholes from the child labor slave trade. What an American hero.” He lights another cigarette, like he’s reflecting on her sacrifice. 

“I’m thinking of stopping in this city tonight,” Mac suggests, and then, noticing a sign, “Shit, did we make it all the way to Indianapolis? I thought this place was made up,” and Dennis laughs low in his throat and nods his assent. 

“I mean, what do they even do in Indiana except fuck each other with no contraceptives? Not saying that’s not a fun time, but, c’mon, have a little class. Just pull in the first motel you see, I’m beat, dude,” and so Mac does, and they wind up at a Comfort Inn. Dennis darts inside to check them in while Mac hoists their luggage out of the trunk (Dennis’s is a clean, expensive rolling number, fit for a king or at least a CEO, and Mac’s is a threadbare duffle bag he stole from a Salvation Army back in junior high. Every major difference between Mac and Dennis presents itself in the comparison of their luggage.)

Dennis comes out jingling a room key and they shuffle across the blacktop, suddenly weak with exhaustion--”We’re too damn old to go this long without sleep,” Dennis observes--and immensely grateful for the prospect of a mattress in the next few moments. When they swing the gaudy door open, though, Mac notices the most glaring of errors; they only got one king bed.

“Yeah, all their double bed rooms were booked,” Dennis says sheepishly, answering the question before Mac could vocalize it, and the parking lot was way too sparse for that to be true but Mac doesn’t fucking care, way too tired to argue. They settle in, Dennis padding around in his boxers and a tattered white undershirt, Mac opting to sleep in the clothes he wore today. They brush their teeth at the same time, jockeying for elbow room and spitting space, and very narrowly avoid throwing punches over who gets to control the TV remote. The person on the other side of the thin wall knocks impatiently, screaming, “Shut the fuck up!” but by then they’ve found wrestling on the shitty, tiny TV and all hard feelings dissipate into the purple evening. 

Even being such a fleabag looking place, the mattress folds itself around Mac’s body like the soft touch of a woman, and he shudders with pleasure, feels the bed dip down as Dennis gingerly gets situated. Some light still filters in through the window; if Mac turned, he could see Dennis, elegantly spread out against the cat-vomit color sheets. He doesn’t, knows he couldn’t take it if he did.

“Den?” he postures drowsily to the unclean wall. “What does the word partner mean to you?”

The other half of the bed stiffens. “You know, dynamic duo, Bill and Ted,” Dennis says, voice slightly strained. Mac doesn’t stay awake long enough to analyze it. He dreams that he’s trapped in a barrel with the gang and they’re rapidly flowing toward Niagara Falls, toward sudden death and everything after, and Dennis takes his hand and squeezes it once, twice.

(When Mac wakes up, his head is lolling onto Dennis’s arm, and Dennis’s sleeping face is mere centimeters from his own. Dennis looks like a snow angel, like a delicate flower growing primly in an overgrown garden, and Mac doesn’t move quick enough to claim plausible deniability.)

\--

Mac wheedles and pleads until Dennis agrees to use the hotel computer to print up directions to the world’s largest ball of twine. It’s a decent eleven hours east of them, yet, but Mac feels invincible, already pounded a beer or three from the 24 pack they picked up at a convenience store when Dennis stopped to replenish his cigarette supply. Dennis slides behind the wheel and off they go deep into corn country, Mac resting his feet on the dashboard (with much bitching on Dennis’s part). 

“Illinois is the most fucking flat and awful state I’ve ever been to,” Dennis remarks after less than an hour inside it’s borders. “We gotta play some games or I’m gonna be snoozin’ over here. Uh, oh, we could play i-spy.”

“I-spy a big fat dickhead named Dennis who likes to play children’s games,” Mac says. “That’s, like, the lamest game you could possibly pick, bro! What about slug bug? That’s a man’s game. We get to hit each other.”

“Okay, okay,” Dennis agrees, and both of them keep their eyes peeled, anxious to throw the first punch. After fifty miles where they haven’t seen a single other driver (except for an Amish dude in a sweet horse drawn carriage), they shake on a slug bug truce.

“You know the country is going down the drain when you can’t even find a Volkswagen,” Dennis bemoans with a shake of the head. “Uh, alright, alphabet game.”

“A for alphabet game!”

“No--no, that’s not how it works,” Dennis protests. “It has to be on a billboard or a sign or whatever. Like,” he pauses to gesture, “A for Altamont, Illinois! I got the first one! Suck on that, bitch.”

“B for bitch.”

“No,” Dennis grouses. “Just, no. What aren’t you getting about this?”

“That this is a stupid fucking game,” Mac says. “It would be much more fun if we were drinking.”

“You are drinking!”

“Well, not in a committed way.”

And on and on they went, leaving golden strands of corn and smashed beer bottles and argument after argument in their wake. It’s comfortable, is what it is, and when Dennis tells a particularly hilarious joke and doubles over howling at his own cleverness, fixing Mac with the full force of his grin, it feels like coming home.

\--

Mac’s phone buzzes, a demanding insect in the center console, shattering the amiable silence they’d cultivated while smoking cigarettes and listening to old CDs they fucked girls to in high school. He barely has time to check the caller ID--Charlie--before Dennis is calmly punching the Dismiss button, facial expression unchanged and unremorseful. 

(Dennis doesn’t like to share, and everyone knows it. Good thing Mac doesn’t either.)

Dennis drapes his arm all cool and composed across the back of Mac’s seat somewhere after St. Louis slips away as a hazy memory. It’s not a big deal. “Can we go in the arch on the way back?” Mac says, and Dennis says, “Hell yeah, baby,” and Mac pretends his chest doesn’t burn red-hot and pleased at that, at baby, what is he, a high school cheerleader learning how smarmy boys are for the first damn time?

(Mac knows what love feels like. It doesn’t hold a candle to this.)

 

\--

They make it to Cawker City, Kansas, way after dark and way after ‘buzzed’. Dennis was jealous that Mac got to drink and prop his feet up all damn day, snagged a sip here and there when Mac “wasn’t looking”, but how could Mac tear his attention away from Dennis forming a perfect O around the skinny neck of the beer bottle, sucking down the alcohol lascivious and vulgar. Dennis acts, sometimes, like he knows exactly what kind of effect he has on Mac, turns it on full blast when he wants something. Mac doesn’t get Dennis’s angle, though, because he already has Mac at his entire mercy. If Dennis says jump two feet, Mac leaps off a cliff. It’s not healthy, Mac thinks, in some part of his mind that remembers healthy relationships, but nothing fun in life is good for you and god, how could you doubt anything in this world when Dennis looks at you like that?

“Home of the largest ball of twine, we’re finally here,” Mac says, satisfied, feeling warm and drunk. “Motel?”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t even be driving at this point,” Dennis says conversationally. They drive on for a few more minutes until an ostentatiously neon motel blinks itself into existence not far up the road. “You’re in luck, we got twin beds this time,” Dennis says, swiveling the keychain around his fingers, scrutinizing Mac’s face as they wander back across the deserted highway, in search of the holy 24 pack of beer. If Mac is disappointed--which he isn’t--he tries to conceal it. (Dennis sees it anyway. They brush their teeth at the same time again, thighs pressed together in front of the cracked, dirty mirror. Their reflections show two men, but all Mac sees is pale fingers in a shiny pink mouth, a long nimble arm resting gently on his neck. It’s not the same, not by a long shot. It’s enough.)

\--

“The world’s largest ball of twine is certainly...large,” Dennis tries, stoically for once not completely shitting on anything that Mac cares about. “And...made of...string.”

“This shit is so cool!” Mac shouts, taking a zillion pictures on his shitty phone, trying to pickpocket Dennis’s--for the camera, dude please, oh come on, will you at least take a picture of me--until Dennis, scornful, snaps a photo of Mac doing a karate move next to the giant brown mess. Mac even convinces Dennis to get him a postcard from the tourist shop nearby, despite Dennis’s building protests and claims that “exactly zero people want your shitty postcard with a giant ball of yarn on it, asshole,” and the shop clerk’s resulting aggression. 

Finally, when they’re back in the car and Mac is smiling with a private little grin, postcard tucked safely in his back pocket, Dennis says, “Why’d you wanna see that, anyhow?”

Mac shrugs. “Bucket list. Why not?”

“Well,” says Dennis. “Your bucket list is goddamn retarded, then,” and then the arm is back, and maybe this is routine now, Dennis overbearing without being predatory, rude without meaning it, and maybe Mac won’t mind if it is.

\--

They see real mountains, impressive mountains for the first time in Colorado, right outside of Durango. Dennis pulls over and they both leap out, awestruck by the silent titans before them. Snow perches atop some of them, even though summer is well underway. “I think my calling was to be a mountain climber, dude,” Mac whispers excitedly, like he’s telling a secret, like Dennis is the only person in the world allowed to hear. “Look at their raw majesty. What better way to, you know, boost my core and pick up chicks than climbing mountains!” 

Dennis rolls his eyes. “If anyone here could climb mountains, it would be me, obviously, what with my figure and natural affinity for all things athletic,” and then a scuffle breaks out on the side of the road, insults flying--you wouldn’t get a single chick no matter how many mountains you climbed, you gaunt looking sasquatch--and Mac comes away a little bruised (not like the old days), and when the smoke settles Dennis is laughing, laying in the gravel next to a shuddering highway just laughing at the blue of the sky. 

“You have to drive now, asshole, I gotta drink this off,” Dennis says, rubbing an imaginary wound on his shin, and Mac nods but doesn’t make any attempt to head for the car. He doesn’t want this moment to end, not ever, plops down next to Dennis (too close) and starts blabbering, naming what he sees in the clouds. It’s childish, it’s ridiculous, they’ll be lucky if they don’t get run over. Mac doesn’t care about any of that, though, just the warm angular body inches from his and the thin mountain air. (Dennis’s hand is on his knee, and his lungs give out. Later, he’ll blame it on the air. Later.)

The mountains stand solemn and impassive in the distance. Mac thinks they’re probably rooting for him.

\--

They decide they don’t want to leave, after all, sun already disappeared behind the horizon, so they get a motel that has a good view of the mountains. There’s a king bed, because of course there is, because their car being one of three in the parking lot definitely suggests that they’re at capacity, but it gives Mac a convenient lie to tell himself. 

Dennis, in flagrant disregard to the lateness of the hour, fires up the wheezing coffee maker in their room and pours coffee into plastic paisley cups, burning his fingers as he passes one to Mac. Dennis downs some like a shot, nerves yelping, and declares it to be the best damn coffee he’s ever tasted. “We’re definitely taking this,” Dennis says, nodding with vigor. “And maybe the coffee pot, too.”

“No, bro,” Mac says, trying not to acknowledge Dennis’s leg pressed solidly against his own. “It’s the mountain water that makes it good, not the grounds.”

Dennis looks disappointed. “Shit,” he says, taking another long swig. Dennis drinks coffee like alcoholics drink whiskey, cultivates dark circles under his eyes like it’s an art form. Mac doesn’t care for coffee, makes panic swell up in his chest like the hand of God, but he takes a sip to appease Dennis. 

“Shit, dude!” Mac crows. “This really is incredible!”

“Yeah?” Dennis says. “You think there’s any way we can like sneak up a mountain, harvest some of their water?”

They debate the logistics of this long into the night. “No, dumbass,” says Mac, “the water will evaporate by the time we get to Philly,” and, later, “Are you serious, Mac? You think that you, someone who has just barely left the state of Pennsylvania, can climb a mountain with no gear in one night?” They wind themselves down around one AM, Mac dozing despite the large amounts of coffee they both just ingested, and right before Mac slips into the corridor of sleep Dennis whispers, soft and vulnerable, “Mac? Are you afraid of getting older?”

“Nmm,” he says, wiping sleep away sluggishly. “No. It’s part of the circle of life, like the Lion King or whatever.”

“But what about wrinkles? And grey hairs? And the slow inevitable depreciation of your youthful body until your organs fail you?”

Dennis is Narcissus reborn, so vain and proud he can get off to his own image, and like the myth his obsession is his downfall. Once they passed the threshold of thirty Dennis’s mental condition worsened, his disordered eating a way of life, all in some futile attempt to preserve his body forever. Mac wants to tell him to fuck off and sleep but he knows how much it means to Dennis to be beautiful, and they’re so close, Mac can’t live with himself if they have to turn back now, if he comes home with more black eyes than postcards.

He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to do this, but he reaches over with his eyes steadfastly shut and taps, gently, where he thinks Dennis’s heart would be. “Don’t sweat it, bro,” he whispers back. “You’re going to live forever.”

Dennis smiles so wide it catches the light. Mac thinks distantly that he could get in a lot of trouble with the man upstairs for promising things like that, but if he’s already in the devil’s grasp, so be it. No storm warning, no turning back. The road before them stretches on and on into infinity.

\-- 

Mac and Dennis stand on the Four Corners and some well-meaning old lady snaps a photo for them, Dennis’s arm casually curled around his waist and chastely removed once the picture is done. Mac feels hot all over--days of this, and he hasn’t had a single chance to get off, and it’s the desert, that’s all it is, fucking sand. Dennis looks like an asshole with his Aviators on and Mac tells him so, earns himself a slap on the neck and a jab about his sleeveless t-shirts. Families congregate nearby, people eat paper bag lunches out of minivan trunks, all come to celebrate where manmade lines blur together in the center of a desert. Mac and Dennis linger longer than necessary, trying to ascribe some magical meaning to a circle in the sand. They can’t, there isn’t one to be found, but they enjoy the sensation of acting like tourists, of being people they aren’t. Out here, Mac and Dennis could be anyone. They sit in the trunk of the Range Rover, following the lead of the families nearby, sharing a single water bottle, sitting too close considering the heat. Mac’s phone buzzes and buzzes til it’s more like background static and he’s got 5 missed calls from Charlie when he finally relents and digs the phone out of his back pocket and three missed texts from an unknown number Dennis confirms to be Sweet Dee.

“Turn that shit off,” Dennis says dismissively. “We don’t need them, we never have, but especially not here.”

Mac nods, but before he can kill the switch, a text from Dee comes through.

9:46 AM: Did he finally snap and kill you both? 

Mac surveys Dennis out of the corner of his eye, comparing him to a house cat: even when he looks as kind as dreaming, soft to the touch and demonstrative, he’s got claws and razor sharp teeth just hidden barely out of sight and he knows exactly how to use them. Mac knows he should be afraid, but he shifts imperceptibly closer; Mac’s self-preservation instinct has never been that good, anyway, and how wonderful to love something that can kill you. If they’re going to go out in a blaze of glory tragically before their time, Mac reasons, there’s no reason they shouldn’t go together.

“Two hundred miles til we’re there,” Mac says, shaking his head to clear it, and Dennis is smiling like the sun coming up and the text message fades away, disappearing into the part of his brain where inimical thoughts lurk in shadows, saving themselves for the next bad day. “You know, I can’t believe we made it this far, honestly.”

“Yeah,” says Dennis, “yeah,” and then they’re kicking up dust and Dennis rests his arm on the middle armrest, so close to Mac without touching, fingertips ghosting over his feather tattoo with a teasing suggestion. So it’s summer, so it’s suicide, so Mac is so blindingly in love with Dennis that he chokes on it. Out here, they can be anyone, so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Survival. 

\--

Seeing something so blindingly, majestically beautiful makes Mac stop breathing. He’s seen pictures, he’s seen TV documentaries, but this is a whole new form of life, the way the earth ripples and enchants you, so natural and yet alien. This kind of splendor doesn’t exist in Mac’s world, never has, barfights and big tits the closest he’d ever come to seeing God’s creation. Mac is suddenly possessed by the desire to fling himself over the edge, like no other experience will ever live up to this, but Dennis is fisting his hands in Mac’s shirt, open closed open closed, thunderstruck excitement, mouth hanging open like a gaping head wound. They say nothing for the longest time, just drink it in, feeling blessed and alive and like everything that ever happened in their entire lives was setting the stage to see this. Mac feels the weight of it, suddenly, body pressed unabashedly against Dennis’s, and when Dennis’s breath catches and he angles their faces together and their lips meet it’s not a surprise. 

(It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, but it sure has been a long damn time. Dennis’s taste never changes, his lips always soft and giving against Mac’s; he’s kissed a lot of people, Mac has, and he always comes crawling back. Like heroin, like the Grand Canyon, there is just simply nothing better life has to offer than Dennis).

“We could be anyone out here,” Dennis whispers, forehead against Mac’s, untold natural wonders just in the background of Mac’s vision. “Hugh Honey and Vic Vinegar are just the jumping off point, see? We can be anyone,” and he kisses Mac again, once, twice, and then he pulls away looking as serene as Mac has ever seen him. Dennis stares at the Grand Canyon and Mac stares at Dennis and finally Dennis says, “c’mon, dude, don’t you want to get a mule ride,” and they kiss again and Mac’s heart is full to bursting. One time he read a book about a dog that loved a boy so much he ran himself to death. One time Mac dragged himself to the end of the earth only to have his body give out on him, and Dennis knows exactly what he’s doing, smiles as Mac tries to swallow it down, dragging him by his hand as they make their way to the place to get a donkey.

(Mac wishes he would die right here, right now, heart explode as he crossed the finish line, happy in this natural wonder that wasn’t made for him, wasn’t made for humans at all. Mac has a hard time letting go. Mac will never forget this as long as he lives.)

Later, when the sun sinks into the soil and they’re forced to leave, park ranger shoving a threatening flashlight in their awestruck faces, they crawl into soft sheets while covered in sand and dirt, ruining every pure and good thing they have the misfortune to touch. Wrestling on the TV again, Dennis’s lips on the inside of his neck, Dennis succumbing to sleep with one arm draped carelessly over Mac’s waist, obnoxious snoring loud in his ear.

There’s not a single part of Mac that isn’t touching Dennis. Mac knows, by the way you learn when you follow a regimen, same thing day in day out, that this is probably the last time Dennis will touch him this way, at least for a long time. Years, even. Mac revels while it lasts, soaking in every single drop of casual affection, committing every square inch that is the map of Dennis Reynolds into his brain.

It won’t be like this again for a long time, but for now, it’s enough. Mac falls asleep far more quickly than he’d like and when he wakes up Dennis is still there, peering at him through sleepy eyelashes, morning sun illuminating his angular face.

“Mornin,” he mumbles, kissing Mac sloppily on the mouth. It’s gross, tastes like morning breath and stale beer, and before Mac can even process the kiss Dennis is sliding off him and padding away into the bathroom. Mac knows that bad days are probably just weeks away, maybe tomorrow, that kisses will be replaced by split lips before Mac can catch his breath. It’s a tragicomedy, this fate of theirs, and like a beggar who steals bread Mac gorges himself on it, fills himself up, allows himself for this one day, in this one hotel room halfway across the country from where he belongs, to be happy with no strings attached.

“I think we should take as much as time as possible getting back to Philly,” Dennis calls, middle of brushing his teeth, making eye contact with Mac in the mirror as he paces and brushes. “I got a bucket list, too, you know.”

It’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still around, and I'm still sinning. Hope you guys like this thing I wrote months ago and let fester in hard-drive hell. It was actually an off-shoot of a much longer, darker fic, that I'm still toying around with...maybe someday it will see the light of day. Happy holidays!


End file.
